General Question

Lunchtime Poll: You win five million dollars from the Publisher's sweepstakes, and the same day as that big Ed guy gives you the check, aliens land on the Earth and say they're going to blow up the world in two days. What are you gonna do with the money?

Serious answer: I try to find a way to do what I can to help negotiate with these silly aliens. Maybe using the money as a way to grease my access to the serious negotiators. Either that, or I use the money to bribe my way into the alien’s presence, so I can talk to them, and explain to them how there are a whole lot of better things they could do with earth than blow it up.

Silly answer: Well duh. Like I get out my secret translation station, and translate to the oh why not Armani sector, where I recruit the Lamborghinans to come as drive these aliens off the planet.

Realistic answer: I probably hang out with my wife and kids, and we all hold each other, hoping for the best.

In the grand scheme of things, 5 mil is not that much money, at least not enough to negotiate with. Therefore, I would rent out a bad-ass fully stocked mansion in Bora-Bora and fly every last one of my family and friends and their families out so we could ride things out together in style and relaxation.

@GoS
5 million is a lot of money, I’m sure is not going to hurt my budget if I use, let’s say, mmm… $10.000 in a few nice things just for the pleasure to posses them, in the end everything resumes to pleasure, pure pleasure

I would immediately buy a bomb shelter and outfit it with as many books and entertainment possible. Of course I’d take care of the necessities such as food and fuel for the shelter. I’d get air purifiers and as many green energy manuals as possible.

Then, I would run out and buy as much ammunition and guns as the government would let me buy.

The only thing left to do after that would be to grab everyone who hasn’t pissed me off and bring them down in the shelter with me. There would be plenty of room for four of us and a dog.

Anyway, you understand where I’m heading with this. I would let the world burn up (or save itself without my help), while I sit in my shelter happily reading my books.

Yeah, unless the aliens only tell you their plans, good luck finding people clerking at Prada or Ferrari or Arby’s or wherever. I’d tend to assume we were all being messed with, and try to get with the people I care most about, watch other people freak out in funny ways, network to figure out what’s really going on, etc.

Probably pay a lot of people a lot of money to have a lot of sex with me. Or just eat a lot of food and watch a lot of TV. Good stuff, too. Or just go shopping at a lot of cool places. Or buy guns and go shoot a lot of Republicans. Or… wait, the aliens would tell everyone they’re going to blow up the world, right? In that case, I think money would have no meaning to everyone else. There would be complete chaos. And looting! In that case, I would just steal from a lot of Republicans.

That’s it, @jam ! I’d buy the space shuttle (NASA would be having a fire sale), ride it up to the mothership, and upload a virus to them ! No, wait – I’d give each alien an iPod and a $10,000 in iTunes money. All the time that it would take for them to download the tunes and listen to them, that would give John McClane time to get up there and take ‘em out.

@Malakai is right, if the aliens really meant business and the world believed their threat was true and Keanu Reeves wasn’t around to convince them otherwise, money would soon have no value as nobody would want to work. What good is money to dead people?. Everything would be chaos and gridlock and probably everything would be free or Burningman style favor economy. Lots of big public street parties, people trying “crazy” things (public orgies, violence, funny stunts) and lots of people praying that it was all just a hypothetical posting on Fluther…

An ax to break down the door to the roof my apartment building where I would spend the next two days listening to the radio, meditating, getting high, and having sex. What fool would be silly enough to sit in any store and collect money from people in the last two days of all earthly existence?

First thing I would do is go to Ireland and see the whole flipping place from north to south and not miss a thing. Then I would come back go to LA and find Colin Farrell and well…. I don’t know what I would do after that, I think thats going to take up my whole time.